


With Time

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Lost
Genre: AU, Canon Divergence, Claire and Hurley time travel, Claire is not left behind, F/M, season 4, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 09:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15793737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Hurley rescues Claire from the Man in Black in the cabin, and they begin to travel through time with the rest of those left on the island. As they make their way in 1974, their friendship begins to evolve into something more.HurleyxClaire, canon-divergent from S4 Ep11 ‘Cabin Fever’.





	1. Chapter 1

Hurley has long since become used to the fact that nothing in his life makes any sense anymore, and that sitting outside a strange little cabin in the jungle that he’s sure wasn’t there before, sharing a candy bar with a guy he’s fairly sure has nearly gotten them killed about three times now, is his new normal.

He wonders what Locke’s doing inside the cabin and whether Jacob’s shown up yet. He’s been inside for a long time, and Hurley’s beginning to get worried that they’re going to be sitting here all night. He can’t decide whether ignorance is bliss or whether it would be better to know what’s going on.

He sees movement at one of the windows and he decides that it’s time to find out. There have always been far too many secrets on this island, always kept with usually good intentions but terrible consequences at times. They’re dealing with something way over their heads now, with mercenaries out to kill them all.

Hurley brushes the crumbs off his shirt and stands up with purpose.

“Hugo, where are you going?”

“To see what’s happening,” Hurley replies simply. “I’m worried that something weird’s going on. Well, weirder than usual.”

He strides over to the window where he saw flickering movement.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Hugo,” Ben warns from behind him. “You might see something that you don’t like. Jacob’s very particular about his visitors. There’s a reason why only John went in.”

Hurley ignores this warning. Considering that the last time Ben nearly got him killed was less than a day ago, he’s not feeling entirely charitable right now. He peers through the window.

Inside are Locke, an older grey-haired man, and…

“Claire? What are you doing in there? Where’s Aaron?”

Hurley watches unseen at the window for a few moments longer, transfixed by the scene within. He can’t hear their conversation through the glass, but even if he could, he wouldn’t be taking any of it in.

Claire looks over through the window, straight at him, but if she recognises him then she doesn’t say anything. She seems calm, slightly spacy, and Hurley wonders if she’s still got some kind of concussion from when she was knocked out in the mortar attack earlier.

He turns back to Ben, who’s still sitting exactly where he left him, thoughtfully chewing his last mouthful of candy.

“Did you know that she was in there?” he accuses.

The wait for Ben to swallow and speak is agonising, and when he does open his mouth again, it’s only to say one word.

“Who?”

“Claire!” Hurley exclaims, as loud as he can without alerting the people inside the cabin. He points back at the window. “She’s in there with Jacob and Locke and there’s no sign of Aaron! Did you know that she was in there? Is that why you said that I wouldn’t like what I saw?”

But Ben’s expression is as perturbed as Hurley’s, and he gets up and comes over to see for himself.

“Claire? What would he want from Claire?”

“Well, you’re the one who takes orders from him, that’s why I’m asking you.”

“I don’t know, Hugo. This is very unorthodox.”

“And where’s Aaron?”

“I don’t _know_ , Hugo!”

Somehow, the fact that Ben is just as clueless makes Hurley feel slightly better. At least they can both be confused together.

“Well, I daresay he’s got some kind of plan for her,” Ben says eventually.

Hurley just gives him an incredulous look as he goes back to sit on their previous log.

“What’s that supposed to mean? You make it sound like he’s going to use her in some weird science experiments.”

“I don’t claim to know the mysterious ways in which Jacob’s mind works.”

“But she’s my friend!” Surely that has to account for something in this world?

Ben just turns his cold eyes on Hurley.

“We all have to make sacrifices for the island, Hugo.”

“No! We don’t! Not Claire and Aaron! None of us even wanted to be here in the first place! All we want to do is to get off this island, not make any sacrifices to it!”

“Is something wrong, gents?”

Locke has come out of the cabin, closing the door behind him to interrupt their argument. Hurley says yes at the same time as Ben says no, and they glare at each other until Locke breaks the tense silence.

“He said that we need to move the island.”

“Oh.” Ben’s expression changes and now he looks very nervous. “Well, in that case, we’d better get going. We’ll need to head to the Orchid Station.”

“Lead the way.”

“Wait!” Hurley exclaims. “What about Claire?”

“What about Claire?” Locke asks calmly.

“Well, we can’t just leave her in there,” Hurley says. “We need to rescue her and find Aaron.”

“Rescue her from what?” Ben asks impatiently. “If she’s with Jacob then she’s perfectly safe.”

“Do you know that was really Jacob?” Hurley folds his arms, staring down Ben pointedly.

“Of course it was Jacob, who else would it have been?” Ben snaps. “Now come on, Hugo, the sooner we get to the Orchid, the better.”

“It wasn’t Jacob,” Locke says.

Ben pales even more. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“He wasn’t Jacob. He was Jacob’s representative.”

“Oh.” This revelation seems to have thrown Ben off balance somewhat, and it’s this hesitation on Ben’s part that makes Hurley even more determined to get Claire out of there by any means necessary.

“Come on, Hugo,” Locke says gently, in that fatherly tone of voice that makes you want to trust him. “Claire’s where she needs to be.”

“Where she needs to be to do _what_?” Hurley presses. “And where’s Aaron?”

“He’s safe.”

“ _Where_?”

“Somewhere else.”

“That is not reassuring!” Hurley screams. “There’s a baby out there separated from his mom and you’re going to take this guy-who’s-not-Jacob’s word for it that he’s safe?”

“We’re running out of time,” Ben cuts in. “We need to go to the Orchid now and move the island before anything else can happen.”

“No,” says Hurley.

“What do you mean, no?” Ben looks like he’s on the verge of apoplexy. “If moving the island is the only way to protect it then that’s what we need to do.”

“No. I’m not going. You two can go and do whatever you want, but I’m staying here. I’m rescuing Claire and finding Aaron.”

“Hurley, you’ll never find your way back to the beach through the jungle.”

“I found my way here from the Dharma barracks, didn’t I?”

Ben and Locke look at each other, but it’s clear from the expressions on both of their faces that they’ve accepted Hurley is not to be swayed.

“Ok then,” Locke says. “Ben, lead the way. Hugo, good luck.”

The way he says it sounds far too ominous for Hurley’s ears, but he doesn’t let it bother him. He needs a plan of action. Rushing into the cabin all guns metaphorically blazing (since he doesn’t have an actual gun and wouldn’t know how to fire one even if he did) does not seem like the brightest idea. He sits back on the log, staring intently at the cabin. He’s slightly worried that if he looks away, it’ll disappear and take Claire with it.

Hurley doesn’t know how long he sits there. There’s going to be no option but to go inside. The longer he leaves it, the more chance there is of the man who isn’t Jacob spiriting Claire away somewhere, and if Aaron is out there on his own, then the longer he spends away from his mommy, the worse things will get for the little guy. Hurley just hopes that he really is safe with Sawyer and Miles.

He gets up, walks over, and opens the cabin door before he has chance to chicken out, and looks inside. Claire and the older man are still there, sitting calmly in rocking chairs as if they’ve been expecting him.

“Hey Hurley,” Claire says. “How are you?”

“Claire, what are you doing in here?”

“I’m with him.” She nods towards the man.

“She’s where she’s supposed to be,” he says.

“What about Aaron?” Hurley asks.

“He’s where he’s supposed to be too.”

But despite the calm assurance in his voice, Claire’s passive expression falters for a moment.

“Where _is_ Aaron?” she asks the man.

“He’s safe.”

“But he’s overdue a feed, he’ll be getting hungry.” Claire winces and brings her hands to her breasts. “I need to feed him.”

“This wasn’t supposed to happen so soon,” the man mutters, and he glares at Hurley as if he’s the cause of all the problems. Maybe he is, but Hurley really doesn’t care at this point.

“Where is my son?” Claire asks, and that’s the Claire that Hurley always knew. She’s back and she’s lucid again, woken up from whatever drugged up state she was in before. She’s up out of her chair, glaring at the man with a ferocity unique to mothers.

“Hurley, there’s really no reason for you to be here,” the older man says. He’s trying to regain control of the situation. Trying to regain control of Claire.

Hurley shakes his head. “Come on, Claire. We’ll go find Aaron now. I’m sure Sawyer and Miles will have taken good care of him.”

He puts a hand on her arm and makes to guide her towards the door.

“You have to leave her here, Hugo,” the man says coldly. “She’s mine now; I’ve claimed her.”

Hurley and Claire look at each other with fear. Hurley’s worries of strange scientific experiments seem ever more likely.

“Come on, Claire,” the man says, coming over and putting a hand on her shoulder. “In a couple of hours, you won’t remember any of this.”

Claire’s struggling, Hurley can see that much. Whatever hold this man has on her and however he came to have it, it’s a strong hold, and Hurley needs to break it.

“You need to leave now, Hugo,” the man says. “Don’t worry. I have great plans for Claire. She’ll be safe with me.”

Hurley shakes his head. “No. She’ll be safer with me.”

“It wasn’t a request.”

The punch comes out of nowhere, hitting Hurley square in the face and making him see stars as his nose starts to weep blood and his eyes water.

“No!”

Claire’s snapped out of it again, and she shakes off the man’s hand on her shoulder, shoving him away from her with more force than she should have in her tiny frame. “I’m getting my son back and you can’t keep him from me!”

She grab’s Hurley’s hand and pulls him out of the cabin, running pell mell towards the trees. When Hurley looks back over his shoulder, even though his eyes are streaming, he can see that the cabin is gone.

They stop for breath and Claire fusses over his face.

“It’s ok, it’s not the first time that I’ve been punched in the hose.” Hurley waves away her concerns. “Come on, let’s go and find Aaron.”

Claire looks around herself, taking in her surroundings. Neither of them have ever been the best at navigating their way through the dense jungle; they’ve never really spent all that much time on their own in it, so it has never been truly necessary for them to learn its geography in any degree of depth. She shakes her head.

“This is where we camped out last night,” she says, indicating the remains of a small campfire. “This is where I saw my father.”

“Wait, that guy who wasn’t Jacob was your dad?”

“Well, it looked like him. I don’t know, my head feels like it’s made of cotton wool. All the memories are slipping away, like waking up from a dream.”

Hurley thinks back to Not-Jacob’s words, that soon Claire will not remember any of their adventure at the cabin.

Claire sits down heavily on a fallen log, burying her face in her hands. Her shoulders are shaking in silent sobs and Hurley goes over to her as they gradually gain voice into a wail of utter despair.

“I left him!” she cries into Hurley’s shoulder as he holds her close. “Oh God, I can’t believe I left him alone! What kind of a mother am I? I can’t even remember where I left him!”

Hurley can’t help, so he does what he’s best at and offers comfort instead.

“We’ll get him back,” he says firmly. “Sawyer and Miles will have taken care of him. All we have to do is find our way back to the beach and we’ll find Aaron again. It’s ok. It’s not your fault. It’s the island, it does weird things to everyone.”

“It hasn’t made anyone else randomly abandon their babies in the middle of the night,” Claire sniffs.

“Well, no-one else actually has a baby, so…” Hurley tails off, as he knows that’s not exactly helping.

Claire continues to cry, and Hurley just keeps holding her. He’s always had a particular camaraderie with Claire, ever since those first few minutes after the crash when she had been in false labour and Jack had told him to stay with her. They’ve bonded further over their grief at Charlie’s death, and Hurley knows that no matter what the island might throw at them next, he’s going to stay by her side through thick and thin. They need each other. Claire needs his support in the midst of her woe and her unutterable despair at losing Aaron, and Hurley needs Claire as something to concentrate on so that his own fears don’t get the better of him.

At length, Claire’s crying subsides, and she dries her eyes.

“Thank you, Hurley,” she says quietly. “Thank you for being here.”

“I’m always going to be here for you,” he says. “Come on, let’s go find Aaron and the others at the beach.”

They head in what they’re pretty sure is the right direction, and they’re about halfway towards their destination when the sky turns bright white and an unearthly noise screams in their ears.

“What the hell was that?” Claire asks once they recover from the blast. “It was like when the hatch blew up.”

“I have no idea.” It was so huge and all-encompassing an event that it makes Hurley uneasy. It was something that covered the whole island, that’s for sure, and he wonders if it has something to do with Ben and Locke moving the island. “I think we ought to keep going.”

Claire nods her agreement and they continue to pick their way through the trees until Hurley stops short. Something is very, very wrong.

“What is it?” Claire asks, coming up beside him.

“Where’s the hatch?”

“What?”

“Our hatch should be here,” Hurley says, indicating the untouched forest. “I swear that this is where the hatch used to be.”

“Hugo? Claire? Claire, where were you? Where did you go?”

Hurley turns to see Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, Daniel, and Charlotte coming through the trees.

“I don’t know,” Claire says. “I can’t remember any of what happened. Where’s Aaron? Is he safe?”

Juliet and Sawyer exchange a glance that Hurley’s not entirely sure he likes the look of, but he doesn’t delve any deeper into it.

“He’s with Sun and Kate,” Sawyer says. Hurley notices that Sawyer doesn’t explicitly say whether Aaron’s actually safe or not, but Claire is relieved nonetheless.

“Where are they?” she asks.

“Well, that’s the thing,” Daniel says, looking at where the hatch should have been. “They left the island, and now those of us that are still here are travelling through time.”

The reason the hatch isn’t there is because they’re in a time before it was built.

Before anyone can comment, the sky lights up again and the same piercing noise deafens them.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s only once they firmly establish themselves in 1974 that the six of them really have any chance to come to terms with what’s happened to them and the fact that they are now stuck in the past, years before any of them came to the island and met each other; years before some of them were even born.

Daniel takes the first opportunity to go to the mainland that he can. Losing Charlotte hit him hard and since time travel is his Thing, he’s determined to work out what, if anything, he can do about their predicament and about getting them back to their proper time – or perhaps making it that they never came back to the seventies in the first place. The others just accept their lot and settle in with the Dharma Initiative, who’ve been very accommodating if looking at them strangely due to their unorthodox method of arriving in the place unannounced.

Claire takes it the worst, and Hurley can understand that. Now that they’re stuck here in the past, her chances of being reunited with Aaron are about as slim as they can be. Hurley hasn’t given up hoping for a miracle. Locke said that he was going to bring everyone back to the island after all, and that might include Aaron. No, Hurley still believes, even though it’s clear that Claire has given up all hope.

For the first couple of weeks, whilst they find their feet with Dharma, she spends most of her time curled up on the sofa of the little house that she, Hurley, and Juliet share, crying in pain that’s both physical and emotional. Juliet says that the glands in her breasts are infected and sore where she’s still producing milk for Aaron but not using any of it, but Hurley thinks that the pain of losing him is even greater.

Claire has always been bright and level-headed, her and Aaron the warm beating heart of their group on the beach, and to see her in such despair tears Hurley apart. There’s got to be something that he can do to make it all better, but short of inventing a time machine himself and getting them back to the future, he’s not sure what he can do.

Still, he’s not giving up on her. Every minute he’s not working in the Dharma kitchens, he spends with her. They don’t talk a lot. It would be a rather one-sided conversation, since Claire doesn’t talk much these days. But Hurley had told her that he would always be there for her, and he’s not going back on that now.

He tries to entertain her as much as he can, telling her stories of what happened during the day, passing on tidbits of gossip that he sees and hears (he thinks that Sawyer’s developing something of a soft spot for Juliet and vice versa).

When Claire giggles at a particularly funny story involving a vat of Dharma mayo, Hurley counts it as a victory.

“You know, I think you need some fresh air,” he chances to say one day. “You’ve been indoors for like, a week. More than a week. That can’t be good for you.”

Claire turns over on the sofa, facing away from him.

“I don’t want to,” she mutters. “How can I? How can I move on and have a life without him? I abandoned him and that matters. It can’t not matter. I can’t just go about life as if nothing happened.”

“It’s ok,” Hurley says. “We know it happened. We’re not saying it didn’t. Locke’s gone to get the others and bring them back. Dan’s working on a way to get us back to the future. We’ll get Aaron back, Claire. We’re just not the right people to be thinking of ways to do that right now. The only thing we can do is try to live our lives and make sure that we’re ready for whatever it is that we need to do when the time comes. You’ll want to be ready when the time comes to reunite with Aaron.”

Claire’s silent for a long time, then gives a slow nod.

“Yeah. You’re right.”

She sits up on the sofa, wrapping the blanket around herself, and Hurley comes to sit down beside her. It’s the same as it was on that first bleak morning after he got her out of the cabin. Neither of them really know where to go from here; they’re both muddling through, leaning on each other as they don’t really have anyone else to lean on.

Hurley holds out a hand.

“Just come sit on the porch,” he says.

Claire flaps a hand free of the blanket and grips his tightly, and he leads her through the house to the front door. She takes a few steps outside, enough to feel the sun on her face and the breeze in her hair, and in that moment, even though her eyes are red and puffy from crying, Hurley thinks that she might just be the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

She turns to him with a small smile.

“It is a lovely day,” she says. “I hope it’s a lovely day in the future too. Aaron liked the sun. I walked up and down the beach with him at sunrise sometimes if he wouldn’t settle. It always used to calm him down.”

It’s the first time that she’s been able to speak about her time with Aaron like this without bursting into floods of tears, and Hurley puts an arm around her.

“Hey.” Juliet comes over from the motor pool, wiping her hands on a rag. She’s smiling widely on seeing Claire out of the house. “It’s good to see you up.”

“Well, it’s Hurley that you need to thank, really.” Claire glances at him and smiles. “He got through to me in the end.”

Later, after Claire has gone to bed, Juliet and Hurley are sitting on the porch, watching the rest of the Dharma village go about their evening routines. They’ve made friends within the Initiative, but the castaways still tend to keep themselves to themselves. It’s much easier when they don’t have to keep dates straight or maintain a lie. Hurley’s a bad liar at the best of times and he’s glad that Sawyer and Miles have done most of the talking during their stay so far.

“Thanks for all you’ve done for Claire,” Juliet says. “I think if anyone was going to help her out of the other side of this, then it would be you.”

Hurley shrugs. “She’s my friend,” he says. “I can’t just give up on her because it’s difficult at the moment.”

Juliet just nods, but there’s something unspoken in the air. Another question that hasn’t been asked.  _Are you sure she’s just a friend?_

Hurley sighs. He’d never really intended to develop any kind of further feelings for her, and certainly not now, when she’s in such an emotionally vulnerable place. He supposes that the best thing he can do is just push them all to the back of his mind and leave them there until Claire’s in a place where he can pursue them a bit further, whenever that might be, if it even comes at all.

“She’ll get there,” Juliet says, and Hurley turns towards her sharply because he could have sworn that she just read his mind. She chuckles. “I can tell from the sigh. I know what you’re thinking. But I think she’ll get through this. As long as she has you to hold onto when she’s drowning, she’ll swim in the end.”

Claire’s better days become more frequent after that, until one day she comes into the kitchen where he’s organising breakfast for the masses and asks if she can help. It’s such a huge step, and Hurley’s practically skipping as he fetches her a spare jumpsuit and apron and sets her to work beating eggs for omelettes. 

“I thought it was time for me to start pulling my weight,” she says as they stand side by side at the counter. “Besides, maybe having something to do each day will take my mind of everything.”

“Are you sure you’re ok with the kitchen?” Hurley asks. “I mean, Sawyer or Juliet could probably get you something a bit less stressful if you want.”

Claire shakes her head. “It’s ok. I’ve worked in a fish-and-fry before, I know my way around food. Besides, I’d rather be with you. You make me feel better. You always have.”

Hurley’s hands pause on the cutting board. “Really?”

Claire nods, entirely in earnest. “Yes. If it hadn’t been for you sitting with me every day, I don’t know how I would have made it through the last couple of weeks. Listening to you helped me. You made me want to get better.”

“Even my ideas for rewriting Star Wars?”

“Especially the ideas for rewriting Star Wars.” Claire laughs. “I enjoyed those ideas. What other ones have you got?”

They spend a happy hour making breakfasts and talking about Star Wars, with no-one else in the kitchen any the wiser. For a while it feels like the old Claire is back again completely, but there’s still a sadness in her eyes when they finish up and it’s time to leave.

“Thanks for everything, Hurley,” Claire says as they walk back to the house. “I don’t know how I can ever repay you for everything you’ve done for me.”

“You don’t have to. We’re friends, it’s what we do. You’d do the same for me if everything was the other way round.”

Claire nods. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. But still, thank you for looking out for me.”

“I said I would always be here for you.” Hurley reiterates his words from the jungle. “I’m sticking to that.”

Claire throws her arms around him, holding him tightly. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

He doesn’t need repayment for being her friend. Having her as a friend is payment enough.

Claire settles into a routine after that and soon becomes an established member of the kitchen crew. They’ve all found their little niches now, and it’s clear that they’re definitely becoming part of the Dharma furniture. Sawyer’s going by James all the time now, and he and Juliet have already won the respect of the rest of the Dharma high-ups with their cool handling of all the weird and wonderful things that have happened since they arrived at the barracks. Even though the structure of Dharma life has given them some sense of normality now, there’s always going to be an inherent weirdness to everything whenever the Island and the Others are involved.

It’s almost a year after their arrival and Hurley and Claire are in the kitchen after everywhere has shut down for the night. They’re making a cake for Amy’s birthday the next day, and although it was supposed to be a surprise, Hurley’s as bad at keeping secrets as he is at lying, and he’s pretty sure that Amy is already aware of the confectionary coming her way. They’re sitting on the counter waiting for the cake to bake and wondering what the end result is going to be like since it’s made entirely of Dharma’s powdered ingredients.

It was Aaron’s first birthday last week, well, it would have been had they still been in the future, and Claire’s not been great in herself as a result, but she’s brighter today. They’re not talking, just sitting beside each other, and Hurley keeps thinking about the fact that he’s been nursing this crush on her for so long and it hasn’t really gone away despite him trying desperately to get over it.

“Hurley,” Claire says presently.

“Yeah?”

She’s not looking at him, she’s looking down at her feet where they’re swinging over the edge of the counter. It’s not a happy stance, not a happy sigh that she gives, and Hurley’s immediately worried.

“What is it? Is something wrong?”

She shakes her head. “No. Yes. No. I don’t think so. I guess it depends.”

“Depends on what? Claire, you’re kind of scaring me a bit here.”

Finally, she looks at him.

“You’ve been such a great friend, Hurley. And I just don’t want to ruin our friendship by doing something that one of us regrets.”

Hurley gulps. “What kind of a thing did you have in mind?”

“Well, at first I didn’t do anything because I didn’t want to be doing it just out of sadness on a weird kind of rebound. But the feelings haven’t gone away, and you’re such a great friend but I think I’m falling in love with you.”

The words are said very quickly and in a huge jumble to get them out, but Hurley understands well enough, and he’s a bit shell-shocked at the revelation that his feelings are actually returned.

“Hurley? Please say something. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I…” He’s lost for words and he knows that he really ought to say something before Claire gets the wrong end of the stick and he manages to make things awkward even though she was the one who first made the confession. “I think the same,” he says eventually. “That I’m falling in love with you, I mean, not that you’re falling in love with me. I had no idea about that. You weren’t obvious.” He stops abruptly, aware that now he’s the one who’s rambling.

“Neither were you,” Claire says.

“Well, you were upset and grieving,” Hurley points out. “It wouldn’t have been right.”

Claire nods. “Yeah, you’re right. And I was so worried that I was just latching onto you as something to cling to whilst I didn’t have Aaron that I tried not to give it away. I didn’t want it all to come crashing down and destroy our friendship with it. These things need to have a solid base, and I didn’t think that we had one. Well, I certainly didn’t have one. But now I think that maybe I do.”

Hurley nods. “Yeah. If you think we do, then I think we do.”

She leans in, and before Hurley knows it, they’re kissing. It’s a messy kind of kiss without any finesse and with too much nerves, but it’s still what they’re both looking for, and they don’t pull away until the oven timer pings to signal that the cake is ready.

They stick by each other all the time after that, throughout the next two years of relative peace and quiet, throughout the return of Jack and Kate and Sayid, and they celebrate the joyous news of Aaron’s safety together. They stick together throughout all of the upheaval that follows with the return to the present and the temple and Jacob and everything that goes with it, until it comes to the point where they can’t stick together any more.

Hurley knows that he has to stay here with Jack. In a way, he’s always known it, that this will be his destiny. He also knows that Claire has to leave, to go and be with Aaron. The promise that he made three years ago, that she would be reunited with her son somehow, still holds true, and he cannot ask her to give that up for him. He can’t ask her to give up Aaron for him when he’s the entire reason that any of this even happened in the first place.

The group is beginning to split up, and they only have a few minutes to make their decisions and say their goodbyes. The others let Claire and Hurley have some privacy.

“It’s not forever,” Claire says, although she doesn’t elaborate as to how they’re going to see each other again. It’s better that way, making no definite plans in the midst of so much uncertainty. It was the vague but assured promise of seeing Aaron again that got Claire through the Dharma years. The vague but assured promise of seeing Claire again will get Hurley through whatever the island chooses to throw at him next.

“I love you,” he says, holding her close and burying his face in her hair for what is not going to be the last time.

“I love you too.”

They share a last farewell kiss, and then Hurley watches her go with Kate and James, off towards the Ajira plane. Off towards her son, as she takes a little piece of his heart with her and leaves a little piece of her own with him.

X

Almost a year to the day since Hurley became the Island’s protector, he’s looking out to sea when a white sail appears. Unless he’s very much mistaken, it’s the same white sail that he watched disappear over the horizon, taking Desmond back to his family, and Hurley’s brow furrows. Why would Desmond be coming back?

He rushes down from the hilltop to the little storehouse that he’s created on the shore. It’s little more than a bunker really, with all the things salvaged from the Dharma village that he thought might be useful. They decided not to rebuild the place in the end. It had suffered too much and there were too many bad memories of things that had happened there, so Hurley and Ben have built their own little cabins with help and guidance from Rose and Bernard. Those two still keep themselves to themselves, still unwilling to get involved in island drama, but Hurley sees them regularly and they always have a kind word for him.

Inside the storehouse he finds the binoculars and runs back up to the hilltop.

“Hugo?” Ben’s perplexed voice follows him up the hillside. “Hugo, what are you doing? What’s going on?”

He ignores Ben and focuses the binoculars on the sails that are approaching the island. The boat is still too far away for him to see anything, but he keeps watching it through the lenses until it finally comes into clear focus.

Desmond is indeed at the helm, looking intently at the island as he steers the correct bearing to reach it unscathed, but he is not the only passenger on the boat. Sitting at the stern are two others.

“Claire?”

Hurley races down to the bay, abandoning the binoculars to Ben, who has the sense not to join him when he sees what’s going on. The wait for Desmond’s boat to come back in is agonising, but Hurley would quite happily stand on the sand for hours as long as it meant he was there to greet them.

Claire gets off the boat and helps Aaron out, and they wade through the shallows to reach the shore.

“You came back,” Hurley says. It’s the first thing he says to her, because he can’t really believe that she’s actually here.

“Of course I came back. I said I wouldn’t leave you forever.”

“But what about Aaron? Will he be ok?”

“He was born here, Hurley. He’ll be just fine.”

She puts her arms around him and pulls him in for a kiss, and Hurley, still slightly dazed, just can’t help feeling blessed. The Island needs him, but there’s no reason why he has to do this alone, and he can’t think of anyone else that he would rather share his life here with than Claire and Aaron.


End file.
